Alone, adj, In Bad Company
by GimmeBanjo
Summary: A new one bedroom apartment with room for only one person: Gregory House. Offshoot of the Bloody Nose/Charlotte series.


Title: Alone, adj. In Bad Company

Summary: A new one bedroom apartment with room for only one person: Gregory House. Offshoot of the Bloody Nose series.

Disclaimer: I'm just playing with him. I'll return him.

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a/n: I was writing the final chapter to Bloody Nose and this idea just sort of popped out and managed to write itself faster than that elusive last chapter… please please PLEASE review. Good, bad or indifferent.

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_Circa 2000_

House hobbled from his bedroom out into the living room. His living room. No one else's. He had made sure his new apartment would be a one bedroom. No room for Stacy. No room for Charlotte. Just enough room for Gregory House.

He shuffled over to a stack of boxes and opened the first one. He had what seemed like hundreds of books, so he might as well start putting them away. He sorted through countless desk references, medical journals and classic novels when he picked up a book with red leather binding. It was thinner than the rest of the books and he ran a finger down the spine. _The Devil's Dictionary._ He didn't remember where he had bought the book, maybe sometime in high school, but he had since marked it up and bound it in duct tape, showing it's age and use. Suddenly, he threw the book back into the box as if it had bit him. He had bought Charlotte her own copy of the book for her 10th birthday a few years ago. "No Charlotte," he thought irrationally, "No room for her here."

Fed up with the books, he made his way over to the couch and sat down. He noted that the movers had put his piano at a funny angle. The more he stared at it, the odder it seemed to look. He pushed himself up off the couch with great effort and limped towards the piano. He caught himself on the edge and took a moment to catch his breath. He pushed the piano to the right a few inches, then backed up. He ran his hand over the smooth, black surface. In his new apartment, there would be no Stacy to put her keys on the closed lid and make any more scratches. With a nod, he headed back to the couch.

He reached for the remote. He had waited all day, but the cable company had finally come. He switched on the TV and looked around him. No one was around to tell him to change the channel... Ooh, he had heard about Gilmore Girls…

He was bored with those vapid Gilmore Girls. They seemed much more fun in the previews. He grumbled to himself that he was starving and launched himself off the couch and into the kitchen. He stood there looking around.

There was silence. He picked a pan out of a nearby box and threw it into the sink. The clanging seemed to echo through the apartment. Then, there was more silence. He smiled a little as he picked up a pot and hurled it in after the pan. More silence shattering clanging, then the silence was back. He looked over his shoulder as if he was expecting someone to come running into the kitchen to check and see if he was ok. When no one came to his rescue, his smile grew.

Forgetting his hunger, he moved back out into the living room where he spotted a stack of boxes sitting by the door. Trash would be picked up in the morning, they should be moved to the curb. He teetered over to the boxes and started to push them closer to the door when the top box slipped off and fell to the floor with a thud. Cursing, he bent over to pick it up and something on the second box caught his eye. "To Keep Daddy Company!" written in childish scrawl. He stopped for a second and smiled at the hand writing. Then, he shook his head as if to get rid of the flood of memories. He picked up the box that had fallen and put it back on top. But instead of pushing the boxes out the door, he pushed them back along the wall. There may not be room for Charlotte or Stacy in his new place, but he couldn't just get rid of them…

He looked down at his watch. "Damn." It hadn't been six hours. "Oh well, I'm in pain," he thought to himself as he reached for the bottle of vicodin his doctor had prescribed. "Just this once…"


End file.
